Visibility Your Way

Driven by increasingly complex and seemingly undetectable security threats, by infrastructure blind spots created by encapsulated and encrypted traffic, and the desire to embrace SDN technology, data center operators are acknowledging the value and criticality of pervasive and end-to-end visibility to deliver essential infrastructure monitoring. So, how do you establish pervasive visibility that enables your monitoring and management strategy while remaining within the constraints of your budget?

Gigamon, the market leader in traffic visibility, is introducing an additional option for visibility by extending its rich software called “GigaVUE-OS” to white box hardware manufactured by two of the leading suppliers, QCT (Quanta Cloud Technology) and Agema Systems, Inc.

Why now, you might ask? As the scope of visibility infrastructure continues to grow, the visibility architecture is evolving into a multi-layered edge-core model.

• The core layer of a visibility architecture is characterized by scale and intelligence capabilities that are demanded by operators as network traffic diversity, complexity and volume continues to increase. Our GigaVUE H Series products in addition to the GigaSMART traffic and flow processing provide the core of any visibility architecture. Some examples of GigaSMART applications include SSL decryption, de-duplication, centralized NetFlow generation etc.
• The edge layer could be both physical and virtual and provides the ‘reach’ of the management, monitoring and security instrumentation. Clearly the breadth and cost of the solution at the edge layer is critical. We offer very competitive solutions for both the physical world with our GigaVUE-TA family, and for the virtual world with our GigaVUE-VM family.

With the announcement of our market-leading GigaVUE-OS for white box platforms, we will extend the edge layer of the visibility architecture to the high volume, “TAP all” world of the Data Center operator. This is significant for three reasons:

• Firstly, by abstracting software from underlying hardware, we have dramatically expanded the scope of visibility while simultaneously addressing the economics of the operator’s budget. By managing the entire visibility infrastructure through a centralized Fabric Manager, operators can lay the foundation for truly active visibility built around SDV, or Software-Defined Visibility.
• Secondly, by using our clustering, a powerful software capability of GigaVUE-OS, ALL the traffic intelligence offered by GigaSMART can now be extended to any port on a white box, even though the white box does not natively have the resources required for such intelligence. And the result is a significant volume of traffic optimization can be achieved at the edge, even when our visibility software is run on white label hardware. Since security and monitoring are essentially policy driven, having a clustered model provides a consistent end-to-end policy for security and monitoring rather than a fragmented model that creates challenges around consistent enforcement across the disparate components. Operators also benefit from the efficiency and effectiveness of having one Operating System from edge to core that delivers powerful and intelligent visibility across your entire infrastructure.
• And finally, we offer choice. Gigamon offers an integrated appliance in the GigaVUE-TA series as well as a white box solution, both of which give the same capability and experience. While many customers will choose an integrated option for simplicity, some others will choose the white box approach where hardware and software are sourced from multiple vendors. This choice allows customers to safely test the waters with a white box solution without compromising on their needs, and later migrate in either direction as they deem fit.

This is what we call “Visibility Your Way”. We let you as a customer decide upon the option that best suits your business and budget without any compromise in the visibility you need to run your mission-critical infrastructure. Regardless of which path you choose—Gigamon platforms or white box, you can have the same visibility software and solution from us, the market leader, running across your entire visibility infrastructure, thereby dramatically simplifying your operations. More for less; the best of both worlds!  For more details, visit www.gigamon.com/products/gigavue-os-white-box